!!!Shanghai, biggest skyline of the world!!!

[little universe]

Originally Posted by oliver999

some parts of shanghai ,by jerryyang

I like this photo, with my favourite district in Shanghai, the west nanjing road area, at the very front of the picture. can't wait for the kerry centre phase 2 around this neighbourhood adding to the skyline.

[christos-greece]

I also love those blue roofs in one of the above photos; why they choose that colour?

[Kintoy]

July 2009, own pics

[staff]

Nice pics! And yeah, there's probably no other city in the world that has such a massive (area, length and height-- combined) skyline as Shanghai's.

[Celebriton]

Impressive! I always look for photos of Shanghai outside Pudong area.

[the spliff fairy]

4000 highrises over 400ft according to the Shanghai Planning Bureau (up from 3000 in 2005, and a mere 20 a decade ago).
Due to the population explosion it's been adding enough highrise space to fill Manhattan each year.

image hosted on flickr


image hosted on flickr


image hosted on flickr

[datoriprogram]

The bottle opener is awesome! Kinda massive city compared to teeeny tiny Stockholm

[warden987]

Originally Posted by the spliff fairy

4000 highrises over 400ft according to the Shanghai Planning Bureau (up from 3000 in 2005, and a mere 20 a decade ago).
Due to the population explosion it's been adding enough highrise space to fill Manhattan each year.

image hosted on flickr

This picture looks very impressive.

Is there a limit to Shanghai's area or something? If it is going to grow at this breakneck pace further, it won't be alright as well. But by now the city just strikes one dumb.

[the spliff fairy]

^That picture above is even quite dated, since it was taken in 2004 about 1000 new highrises have been added. The authorities have enforced
strict new liveability laws (they even declared a moratorium on highrise building in 2004) whereby x amount of people have to live within x vicinity
of x amount of green space, so thankfully the pic is also greener nowadays.


But yep, it's ahuge headache for the govt- China basically expects 3-400 million people to become urbanites in the next few years and the city
authorities are trying to curb the growth by building several ecofriendly, million+ satellite cities around the Shanghai conurbation. With current
growth rates at near 1 million a year into the area, the city may one day reach 60 million at worst case scenario - even more if the sprawl
encompasses neighbouring cities into one. Its already connected up major metropoli such as Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou etc - and currently
80 million reside in this delta, the largest concentration of adjacent metropolitan areas in the world.

Hopefully that won't become the case, but this is what the delta looks like at the moment - getting dangerously large:



urban areas in green:




and night view of 50 million urbanites:




...and this is what the 'countryside' in between these cities looks like, China's richest farmers with state-built multistoried villas and apartment
blocks (they even have a supertall here). It goes on for thousands of square miles and is classed still as 'rural' (note the fields and lack of roads:

[Shera]

I think the above picture is near Hangzhou, about 15-20 miles northwest, where the mountains can be seen. I tried finding this particular spot on Google Earth, but couldnt find any rural areas that appeared to be this crowded. Perhaps it is the angle of the viewpoint, where the buildings overshadow most of the farm space on the ground. It seems just as crowded as Suffolk County (NYC's suburb) on average--perhaps more if there are lots of people living in those 3-4 floor blocks.

I'm not trying to sound like a know-it-all. Could somebody please point out the exact location of that picture?

[the spliff fairy]

Google Earth satellite closeup (scroll around - its endless):

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&....0418&t=k&z=15



I have actually taken the train from HK to Shanghai and you pass into that kind of housing near the Delta. It's jawdropping- it seems like the biggest city imaginable, thousands upon thousands of buildings in the same pomo styles - sounds tacky at first but when the horizon is like that it looks amazing - we went from high pitched roofs and turrets to clocktowers to midnight blue onion domes by the thousand . I STRONGLY reccomend someone does that trip, especially if youre an urbanist nerd.

I was most confused when the houses gave way to a big city - Hangzhou, not Shanghai - that would come later. Basically it took me about 5 years to work out what I'd seen was farmer's housing when someone on this forum posted pics of them, and why Hangzhou seemed so much larger than Shanghai, and why they weren't one city.


view from the train looks pretty much like this, to the untrained eye it looks like suburb, but look closely and youll notice the agriculture and lack of streets:




from a slightly higher perspective, housing types:

image hosted on flickr



image hosted on flickr
image hosted on flickr



image hosted on flickr






image hosted on flickr







btw, the residential supertall in one of the 'villages':







the reason some of these places are so developed is because the farmers have become rich from the land values, but cannot move to the cities as a local bylaw stipulates they must be resident to claim the free housing and funds. Thus these farmers bring the city to them.


millionaire farmers in the Huaxi village:

[warden987]

Man, this worst case scenario shouldn't happen. If it happened and this cityscape would be lasting for dozens of kilometers interspersed somewhere with this "rural landscape" as above, it would be a nightmare, at least for me. But maybe some skyscraper fans will like it. Sure a large city without limits.

I know that the Chinese government develops other areas of the country as well, but some more work should be done in this direction.

Right now Shanghai has a very proud urbanistic view.

By the way, if you have created a thread about Shanghai, could you please post some old pictures of Shanghai?

[the spliff fairy]

dbl post

[warden987]

please can you make a chronology of the tallest buildings in Shanghai with their photos built from the beginning of the 20th century. It would be very interesting.

[drunkenmunkey888]

Someone needs to hire an architect for these rural areas. These houses are just incredibly tacky and hideous.

On the other hand, I think it would be great for Shanghai municipality to have over 60 million people. There is certainly enough flat land to accommodate a Tokyo-style sprawl

[Shera]

Originally Posted by Kintoy

July 2009, own pics

Wow, I love that one!!! Awesome, man!

Here's one I found on Flickr, courtesy of Douglas Martell:

image hosted on flickr


What's that thing, you ask? It's a four-letter word!

Smog's a bigger problem in Shanghai than in most other cities, including LA or NYC or Tokyo. Hopefully China does something about it.

[lkx314]

Nice buildings, but i've heard that most of these are actually planned for future uses, so presently they are unoccuiped???

[Chicagoago]

all those pictures of "rural" areas, and I could only find two signs of life! The two people in the field. that's crazy.


How do they move around? Especially with the canals. Anywhere else you'd have thousands and thousands of people living in those areas. This looked like buildings in fields with no means of transport.

[Manila-X]

Originally Posted by Shezan

racing with Sao Paulo?

Sampa doesn't even have supertalls or scrapers over 700ft.

[Kintoy]

Originally Posted by the spliff fairy

Google Earth satellite closeup (scroll around - its endless):

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&....0418&t=k&z=15



I have actually taken the train from HK to Shanghai and you pass into that kind of housing near the Delta. It's jawdropping- it seems like the biggest city imaginable, thousands upon thousands of buildings in the same pomo styles - sounds tacky at first but when the horizon is like that it looks amazing - we went from high pitched roofs and turrets to clocktowers to midnight blue onion domes by the thousand . I STRONGLY reccomend someone does that trip, especially if youre an urbanist nerd.

I was most confused when the houses gave way to a big city - Hangzhou, not Shanghai - that would come later. Basically it took me about 5 years to work out what I'd seen was farmer's housing when someone on this forum posted pics of them, and why Hangzhou seemed so much larger than Shanghai, and why they weren't one city.


view from the train looks pretty much like this, to the untrained eye it looks like suburb, but look closely and youll notice the agriculture and lack of streets:




from a slightly higher perspective, housing types:

image hosted on flickr



image hosted on flickr
image hosted on flickr



image hosted on flickr






image hosted on flickr







btw, the residential supertall in one of the 'villages':







the reason some of these places are so developed is because the farmers have become rich from the land values, but cannot move to the cities as a local bylaw stipulates they must be resident to claim the free housing and funds. Thus these farmers bring the city to them.


millionaire farmers in the Huaxi village:

i've seen scenery similar to these on my way to Jinshanwei, about 100km south of Shanghai.

thanks Shera